uninsured

In a six-page letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the health insurance lobby reiterated today that it won’t be supporting the $894 billion reform bill scheduled for a floor vote tomorrow, according to reports.
No shocker here. America’s Health Insurance Plans has long feared the consequences to business if Congress created a public insurance plan [...]

We weren’t the only folks curious about the morning’s claim from Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) that the GOP’s health reform bill covers more uninsured Americans than the Democrats’ proposal. The fact checkers at Media Matters were also left scratching their heads, and here’s what they found.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) just took to the House floor to decry the Democrats’ health reform bill because, she said, it would leave too many folks uninsured. She must not have read the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the GOP’s legislative alternative, which, CBO found, would leave 52 million nonelderly Americans uninsured in 2019 — [...]

Sen. Mary Landrieu (La.), the moderate Democrat who’s been a loud critic of her party’s plan to create a public insurance option, is warming to the proposal, Roll Call reported today.
“The president was right to move us in the direction of finding a way to turn this cost curve down. We cannot accomplish any of [...]

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) was none too happy when House leaders stripped his single-payer provision from their $894 billion health reform proposal. Today, he’s urging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to reinstate it.
“Like many other important reforms included in the underlying bill, the Kucinich amendment is the object of attack by the insurance industry,” Kucinich [...]

In July, single-payer health care advocates won a prominent victory when the House Education and Labor Committee approved legislation empowering states to adopt Medicare-style health care systems. The 25 panel supporters were a rare mash of liberal Democrats who support the policy and conservative Republicans with a history of advocating for states rights.
Neither group will [...]

The Washington Post points out today that, by divorcing public plan rates from Medicare in their final health reform bill, House Democrats might have to hike Medicaid eligibility to 150 percent of poverty as a compensation measure.
The shuffle looks fine on paper. After all, coverage is coverage, right?
Actually, no.

Beneath breathtaking headlines, a number of news outlets are reporting this morning that House Democrats will include a public insurance option in the health care reform bill they’ll bring to the floor.
The mystery is why this is news, other than we now have a bill to talk about.

Here’s Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) explaining to Fox News today why he’s threatening to filibuster the Democrats’ health reform bill over the inclusion of a public insurance plan:
If the public option, the government-run health insurance company, negotiates hard to lower the reimbursement — the money it’s paying to hospitals, doctors — they’re going to have [...]

Yesterday, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) thrust himself into the center of the health reform debate by suggesting that he’ll support a GOP filibuster if the bill contains a public insurance plan, as the Democrats’ proposal does.
It’s not exactly news that Lieberman opposes the public option. In June he was telling reporters that (1) the country [...]